The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You

by Julie Zhuo

Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together.

You can be the smartest, most well-liked, most hardworking manager in the world, but if your team has a long-standing reputation for mediocre outcomes, then unfortunately you can’t objectively be considered a “great” manager.

“Research consistently shows that teams underperform, despite all the extra resources they have,” he says. “That’s because problems with coordination and motivation typically chip away at the benefits of collaboration.”

Everyone on the team should have a similar picture of why does our work matter?

The first big part of your job as a manager is to ensure that your team knows what success looks like and cares about achieving it.

As a manager, you are judged on your team’s outcomes, so your job is to do whatever most helps them succeed.

This is why adaptability is a key trait of great managers.

Can I Provide Stability for an Emotionally Challenging Situation?

the best outcomes come from inspiring people to action, not telling them what to do.

The sooner you internalize that you own the outcomes of your team, the easier it becomes to have these conversations.

there are two other groups you can lean on for support: other managers in your organization who support related functions, and managers in your area of expertise outside your organization.

Here are some of my favorite questions to get the conversation moving:

Good 1:1 questions

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,

make sure you address the following: What a great job looks like for your report, compared to a mediocre or bad job

EVERY MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT IS A FAILURE TO SET EXPECTATIONS

Whenever you find yourself deeply disappointed, or disappointing someone else, ask yourself: Where did I miss out on setting clear expectations, and how might I do better in the future?

The best way to make your feedback heard is to make the listener feel safe, and to show that you’re saying it because you care about her and want her to succeed.

One simple way to do this is to state your point directly and then follow up with, “Does this feedback resonate with you? Why or why not?”

When I [heard/observed/reflected on] your [action/behavior/output], I felt concerned because . . . I’d like to understand your perspective and talk about how we can resolve this.

Pick three to seven people whom you work closely with and ask if they’d be willing to share some feedback to help you improve.

What does a great outcome look like?

hiring is not a problem to be solved but an opportunity to build the future of your organization.

After I deliver an offer, I try to check in with the candidate every other day to let her know that I am thinking about her and that I’m excited to welcome her to my team. I ask if she’d like to talk through any questions, and sometimes we’ll do lunch or dinner to discuss the role in more detail. The more senior the candidate, the more critical your involvement is in the close because that person likely has many options, and you are looking for her to play a leadership role within your team. Paint a vivid picture of how you see her having impact. Help her understand why the role is exciting and why she’s the perfect person to tackle these big problems.

Remember how assholes are the one thing you shouldn’t tolerate on your

If you were to hike some distant mountains or sunbathe on a remote island for a few months, how much would your own manager need to step in to ensure that everything ran smoothly?

To help you get started, ask yourself the following: Assume you have a magic wand that makes everything your team does go perfectly. What do you hope will be different in two to three years compared to now? How would you want someone who works on an adjacent team to describe what your team does? What do you hope will be your team’s reputation in a few years? How far off is that from where things are today? What unique superpower(s) does your team have? When you’re at your best, how are you creating value? What would it look like for your team to be twice as good? Five times as good? If you had to create a quick litmus test that anyone could use to assess whether your team was doing a poor job, a mediocre job, or a kick-ass job, what would that litmus test be?

Futurevision

Effort doesn’t count; results are what matter.

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

Have you ever heard of Parkinson’s law? Coined by Cyril Parkinson, a twentieth-century British historian and scholar, it states: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

work with your team to set realistic and ambitious target dates for each milestone. Keep in mind the planning fallacy: our natural bias to predict that things will take less time and money than they actually do. Allot a buffer for dealing with unexpected issues. From your target date, work backward and figure out who needs to do what every week. Ask people to set and publicly commit to their weekly goals—this creates accountability.

Don't set dates for them

The best plans don’t matter if you can’t achieve them accurately or quickly enough to make a difference.

Just as no financial advisor would recommend putting all your money into one kind of asset, neither should you tackle projects with one kind of time horizon.

Over time, I came to understand that this was the job. As the number of projects I was responsible for doubled, tripled, and quadrupled, my ability to context switch also needed to keep pace.

At the other extreme, if you step back too much, you’re the absentee manager. Some of your reports appreciate the independence, but most wish they had more support. When things get rocky, your team feels like the Wild West, a place with no rules because there’s no sheriff in town.

A manager’s job is to be a positive multiplier for her team. When she isn’t, the costs are high: projects take longer because she inserts herself at the wrong times, outcomes are poor because she makes bad calls, or complaints pile up because her people aren’t getting what they need.

Even when a manager isn’t actively making things worse, she may still be holding the team back. Maybe she can put out fires but she’s not helping the team become more fireproof.

“Assume the role was open. Would you rather rehire your current leader or take a gamble on someone else?”

Good framing for anyone. If you wouldn't then what would it take to change it?

the point of being a manager is not to satisfy your own ego; it’s to improve the outcomes of your team.

Identifying and communicating what matters. Your role has broader scope, which means that you’re able to see across a wider variety of work and spot patterns that your reports might miss.

If you picked five random members of your team and individually asked each person, “What does our team value?” what would you hear?

When you value something deeply, don’t shy away from talking about it. Instead, embrace telling people why it’s important to you. Assume that for the message to stick, it should be heard ten different times and said in ten different ways.